The Pain That Teaches: How Wounds Become Your Strongest Teachers

I currently have a family member in King’s College Hospital in London, quite seriously ill but gradually on the mend, thank God. Even though he is unwell and should be focusing on healing, I find him concerned about the letters that still need attending to.

Life does not pause when pain enters the room. Bills still arrive. Responsibilities still knock. Identity still clings to duty, even when the body is asking for rest.

That truth stayed with me.

Naomi was different. On the morning her letter arrived, she did not open it straight away.

She stood in her tiny kitchen with the kettle boiling and the radiator ticking, as if it were counting down something she could not name. The envelope was plain but official, the kind that makes your stomach tighten before your eyes even touch the words. She slid it beneath a stack of unopened post and told herself she would deal with it later, when she felt stronger, had more time, and when her hands stopped shaking.

But pain is not polite. It does not wait for a free weekend.

It was past midday when she opened it, read it twice, then sat on the floor with her back against the cupboard, crying quietly so the neighbours would not hear. The letter confirmed what she already suspected. The company was “restructuring.” Her role was being made redundant. After eight years of doing everything right, of staying late, of covering shifts, of being dependable, she was being removed like a dot of dirt on a clean shirt.

What surprised her most was not the job loss.

It was what came with it.

Shame.

Not loud shame, not the kind that makes you announce your pain to the world. This was the private kind. The kind that whispers, you are not enough. The kind that makes you glance at other people’s lives and feel as if you missed a rule everyone else learned early.

That evening, she did what many people do when life breaks its rhythm. She withdrew. She cancelled plans. She kept her phone face down. She watched random videos just to avoid the moment her mind went quiet and the thoughts became loud.

Naomi was not alone in this, even if she felt like she was. Large-scale surveys consistently show that stress, disconnection, and loneliness are widespread, and that prolonged emotional strain often manifests as physical symptoms in adults, including fatigue, sleep disruption, and anxiety.

A week later she met her friend Aisha for coffee, mostly because Aisha would not stop texting and Naomi did not have the energy to keep making excuses.

Aisha listened without trying to fix her. No rushed advice. No forced positivity. Just presence.

When Naomi finally paused, Aisha said, “Tell me the truth. What hurts most?”

Naomi stared into her cup. “I feel disposable,” she whispered. “I gave them my best. I did everything right. And still it did not protect me.”

Aisha nodded slowly, like she was weighing a truth that needed respect. “That wound,” she said, “is trying to teach you something.”

Naomi almost laughed. “Teach me what? That people do not care?”

“No,” Aisha said gently. “That your worth cannot be negotiated by an employer. That your identity cannot be rented out by the hour. That you are not what you lost.”

Naomi felt something shift, not relief, but recognition. It was the first time she realised she had been living as if her life stood on a single pillar. Work. Stability. Approval. Once cracked, everything shook.

That night, Naomi took out a notebook she had not used in years. It was half empty, dusty at the edges, like a forgotten room in her own house. She wrote one sentence.

“I do not know who I am without the life I built.”

She kept writing.

At first it was ugly. Angry. Unfair. Childish, even. She wrote about her fear of starting over. About money. About how she hated the word redundant. About how small she felt when she imagined job interviews. But then, as if her pen were digging through a layer of hard earth, she hit something softer underneath. She wrote about her father leaving when she was young. About how she learned to be good so people would not abandon her. About how she became reliable because reliability felt like safety.

Without knowing it, Naomi had stepped into something psychologists have studied for decades. Research on expressive writing shows that honestly writing about stressful or traumatic experiences can support emotional processing, improve psychological wellbeing, and help individuals create meaning rather than suppress emotion.

She wrote for twenty minutes, then stopped. She expected to feel worse.

Instead, she slept.

Not perfectly. Not like a child. But she slept like a woman whose body had finally been allowed to tell the truth.

Over the following weeks, Naomi built a small routine. She woke early, made tea, wrote for fifteen minutes, then went for a walk. Not to be productive. Not to optimise her mindset. Just to keep moving, because she had learned the danger of staying frozen too long.

One morning, on a walk through the park, she noticed an older man sitting on a bench feeding birds. He looked peaceful, not because his life had been easy, but because his face carried the softness of someone who had survived hard things without letting them turn him bitter.

She sat at the far end of the bench, giving space. After a few minutes he spoke without looking at her.

“You’re carrying something heavy,” he said.

Naomi hesitated, then surprised herself by answering. “I lost my job.”

The man nodded. “Loss feels like an ending,” he said. “But sometimes it is an invitation.”

The word irritated her at first. Like a motivational slogan trying to sell her pain back to her. But later that day she wrote it down anyway. She realised something simple and frightening. If she did not choose what her pain meant, her pain would choose for her.

Psychologists refer to this process as posttraumatic growth. Researchers Richard Tedeschi and Lawrence Calhoun describe it as positive psychological change that can occur through the struggle with adversity, including deeper relationships, personal strength, new possibilities, and spiritual growth.

Naomi did not romanticise her hardship. She did not pretend the wound was a gift. She simply admitted the truth. The wound was real, and so was what it was waking up inside her.

She started applying for work again, but with different eyes. She asked better questions in interviews. She stopped begging to be chosen. She began choosing too.

She also reached out to two people she had drifted from, not to network, not to gain advantage, but because she finally understood something she had ignored for years. Isolation multiplies pain. Connection divides it.

Months later, Naomi got a new job. Not perfect, but fair. And on her first day, she did something she had never done before. She took her lunch break outside, sat quietly, and prayed.

Not for a life without pain.

But for the courage to keep learning from it.

“God,” she whispered, “do not waste this wound. Make it clean. Make it wise. Make it useful.”

That evening, thinking again of hospital rooms and unopened letters, Naomi understood something clearly. Even when the body breaks or a life structure collapses, we cling to responsibility because it gives us identity. Healing begins when identity is allowed to shift.

She opened her notebook and wrote one final sentence beneath the first.

“I am not what I lost. I am what I became when I refused to give up.”

Because that is the hidden power of pain. Not that it makes you suffer, but that it makes you honest. And when you become honest with yourself, you stop living as a stranger in your own life.

Pain teaches. Not gently. Not quickly. But truthfully.

And if you let it, it will turn your wound into a doorway.

Recommended books to inspire you

·       Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl

·       The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk

·       Option B by Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant

·       Rising Strong by Brené Brown

·       The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck

·       The Gift of Imperfection by Brené Brown

·       When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chödrön